CodeTwo Exchange Sync is a great tool that can synchronize data between any folders on an Exchange Server - personal or public mailboxes, calendars, contacts etc. It is most widely used for synchronization of calendars or contacts, and in this article specifically we will focus on extending the functionalities of the program in terms of calendar synchronization.

Users of MS Outlook are often accustomed to using color categories within their calendars - it is an easy and comfortable way to manage your calendar and quickly view those items you really need to look at. Some say that working without color categories is impossible, especially if there is a lot of items in your calendar (and if you are viewing multiple overlay calendars at once... boy, that is where the fun begins). Obviously, it would be great if color categories could sync between Exchange folders too, and move over from one user calendar to another, or from a personal calendar to a public one - that would actually make groupwork even easier and more effective. Unfortunately, at first glance, CodeTwo Exchange Sync does not synchronize color categories at all. But surely, there must be a way of dealing with such an issue...

And now you could think - "Hey, what about that CodeTwo CatMan thingy? That will easily synchronize all my Outlook categories!" And you would be 100% right to think so, except that it would not. Upon deploying the tool in your Exchange environment you will see that the color categories are still not synchronized. To solve this mystery and have the color categories properly synchronized between all Outlook clients working in your Exchange environment, you will need to follow the steps below:

1. Start with creating a One-to-One synchronization task from a public calendar folder to a user's personal one (Fig. 1.).

Fig. 1. Creating a One-To-one synchronization task in CodeTwo Exchange Sync.
 

2. Now, scroll down to the Item Modifications section and click Add.... From the Property name dropdown box choose Categories, and from the box below - Append new categories to item categories. As the category name use the Full Name of the user whose calendar you are now setting up to be synced (Fig. 2.).

Fig. 2. Adding item modifications for the synchronization task.
 

3. Repeat the above steps for all other users you want to be kept in sync with the public calendar. Do not forget to save your changes afterwards!

4. Now, in the local Outlook clients of your users with CodeTwo CatMan installed, simply create new categories using the very same Full Names you just used in step 2 above (Fig. 3.).

Fig. 3. Creating a public category in CodeTwo CatMan.
 

And voila! Now your color categories are synchronized in your Exchange envrionment. Every time a user (in our example it will be Jeffrey) creates a color-coded entry in his or her calendar, this entry will be moved over to the public calendar - with the correct color as well! (Fig. 4.).

Fig. 4. Color category synced between Jeffrey's private calendar and a public one.